...The number of executions, which some authors put at six hundred, seems exaggerated, but it was perhaps even higher, if we include the many female accused who—as the preliminary investigations had not yet been carried out when the commission came to an end—were sent to fill the prisons of Bordeaux. The priest of Azkaine, and the priest of Ziburu and his curate, had been degraded and burned at stake; five other priests owed their lives to the intervention of the bishop of Baiona, Bernard d’Echaux. The premature return of five or six thousand Basque sailors from Newfoundland, and the fury they displayed, also mitigated the excessive zeal of the inquisitors as the investigation reached its end. Indeed, in order to be charged, one merely had to be denounced, even by a child. It is easy to imagine that, initially, many personal vendettas were settled in this way, and later, many victims—thanks to torture—named other alleged witches, in the hope of saving their own skins. To verify his case, de Lancre ensured that they had “the Devil’s mark” engraved in the shape of a toad’s claw in the white of their eyes, or that their bodies were at certain points insensible to the prick of a long needle. A seventeen-year-old girl, Morguy by name, was particularly expert in this kind of investigation. She assisted the court, and it is suspected that she succeeded in having several innocent people sent to the stake, at her own whim...
